They’ve used spare bedrooms in their homes to accommodate waist-high stacks of case files.

1,718

The number of cases heard by the Virginia Board of Nursing across 2025

Tapped vacation time to attend meetings. And spent countless hours under fluorescent lights in a bland Henrico boardroom considering everything from how to discipline rule-breaking nurses to honoring practitioners, revising regulations, considering health-related legislation, and deciphering the infinite details governing nurse licensure and education.  

“In my brief, one-minute meeting with Gov. Youngkin, I said, ‘Thank you, sir, for the best, hardest volunteer job I’ve ever done,’” laughed Helen Parke (MSN ’94), the Virginia Board of Nursing’s first vice president, a veteran, and a Blue Ridge Medical Center family nurse practitioner whose UVA education proved seminal to her service.  

“To be mentored, taken in, to have the professors listen to you, and really be concerned about your future and where you’d go was such a new experience for me. It really impacted how I delivered my care and helped me think about nursing in a more esoteric level. And it definitely laid the foundation for everything that followed, including this position here.”

Helen Parke (MSN ’94), Virginia Board of Nursing's first vice president

“To be mentored, taken in, to have the professors listen to you, and really be concerned about your future and where you’d go was such a new experience for me,” recalled Parke. “It really impacted how I delivered my care and helped me think about nursing in a more esoteric level. And it definitely laid the foundation for everything that followed, including this position here.” 

The largest of the state’s 13 regulatory boards, the Virginia Board of Nursing oversees the state’s more than 245,000 licensed practitioners, 177,000 of whom have a nursing credential. Board members apply through the state’s commissioner for health and human services and are appointed by the governor to four-year terms, positions that require week-long board meetings once a month and are not paid. 

“People always ask me, ‘Do you enjoy being on the Board of Nursing?’ and I always say, ‘Enjoy is a funny word,’” said Tucker Gleason, one of two citizen board members and a University of Mary Washington graduate who spent her final year of study at UVA. “No, I don’t enjoy watching people destroy their careers and credentials they’ve worked so hard to get. But do I find it to be meaningful work? Yes, it’s absolutely meaningful.” 

245,000+

Number of licensed practitioners overseen by the Virginia Board of Nursing

For two-term Virginia Board of Nursing member and the School’s associate dean for graduate programs Shelly Smith (BSN ’99, DNP ’12), board service offers a chance to use the “system-level thinking” honed at UVA. 

“We’re protecting the public and thinking about, yes, the individual respondent, nurse, nurse’s aide sitting in front of us, but we’re also considering system-level problems,” said Smith. “That’s really the work of the group, and these meetings: how can we regulate, or deregulate, to address the complexity of the system, and how nurses are integrated into that system.” 

“We’re protecting the public and thinking about, yes, the individual respondent, nurse, nurse’s aide sitting in front of us, but we’re also considering system-level problems. That’s really the work of the group, and these meetings: how can we regulate, or deregulate, to address the complexity of the system, and how nurses are integrated into that system.”

Shelly Smith (BSN ’99, DNP ’12), associate dean for graduate programs and a two-term Board of Nursing member

UVA Health clinician Jeanell Webb-Jones, care coordinator for patients with HIV who works in UVA’s Infectious Diseases and Travel Clinic, said Virginia Board of Nursing service feeds her leadership skills and has deepened her advocacy for nurses and the nursing profession. Paul Hogan (COL ’74) taps his expansive knowledge of health economics developed at UVA, bringing expertise in topics from nursing supply to scope-of-practice regulation as a citizen board member. Victoria Cox (MSN ’05), the Virginia Board of Nursing's second vice president, and a nursing and healthcare consultant, agreed the role feeds her passion for service, but warned its workload is not for the faint of heart. 

“It’s a true working board,” explained Cox. “The volume, for a voluntary board for people who work full-time, is incredible. There’s a lot of driving. And you’re constantly preparing, on the phone every single day preparing for motions during meeting weeks, and you get those giant boxes of materials to read delivered to your door.” 

But the meaning is deep.  

Cox, who worked at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for more than 30 years, plans to reapply for a Virginia Board of Nursing seat once her term expires in 2027, after her yearlong stint as the Board’s first vice president, succeeding Parke, who serves through the end of 2026. Gleason, Parke, and Little plan to reapply, too. 

“The lunches are good,” laughed Cox, “and these are long, fun days. And we’ve got good people!”